Will Hamas' boosters in the U.S. foreign policy establishment face a reckoning?

This Washington Post article about those who “gambled” on a “pragmatic” Hamas did my heart good. The Post wasn’t forceful enough in criticizing that portion of our foreign policy establishment — the dominant portion, in my view. Still, the Post stated in its headline that the “gamble” was "a deadly mistake.”

The “pragmatic” version of Hamas was said to be interested in reducing hostilities with Israel and “opening diplomatic back channels” with Israel and the U.S. It supposedly was “contained.” This view of Hamas was widespread enough that, according to the Post, it gave rise to a name — “the pragmatic era.”

No conservative I know of ever subscribed to this nonsense. We took Hamas’ charter seriously. That our foreign policy establishment didn’t — that it invented a pragmatic Hamas — speaks volumes about its cluelessness.

The Post grudgingly recognizes who was right and who was wrong about Hamas:

“It’s hard to reconcile this pragmatic version of Hamas over the past 15-odd years with what just happened, which will close the door on any kind of international acceptance,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators and now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. . . .

The veteran terrorism researcher Bruce Hoffman, writing in the Atlantic this week, revisited the group’s original 1988 charter, which “spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions.” The attack Saturday, Hoffman wrote, “was in fact the inchoate realization of Hamas’s true ambitions.”

Foreign policy analysts who warned against buying into the idea of a new-and-improved Hamas are finding themselves vindicated in the worst way.

“Hamas was never the answer,” said Michael Singh, who served as a senior Middle East director for the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration and is now at the Washington Institute. “Pragmatic engagement and so forth was always an illusion, and now everyone is seeing that.”

Too bad it took the carnage of last Saturday for our foreign policy establishment to see the obvious (but for how long?).

The corollary to the “pragmatic era” thinking was that Hamas could play a big role in a peace process that would result in a two-state solution in the Middle East. In 2009, I was present when the ambassador to the U.S. of a major European country (hint: it produces lots of cheese) told a small group of journalists and bloggers that Hamas, which he described as “moderate,” could be the key to peace in the Middle East.

The stupidity of this statement was jaw dropping. But it wasn’t discernibly more stupid than Nancy Pelosi’s fantasy that the road to Middle East peace ran through Damascus and the butcher Assad.

And the ambassador’s benign view of Hamas was no more ridiculous, and perhaps was less dangerous, than Barack Obama’s fantasy (seemingly shared by Joe Biden) that we can bring stability to the entire region by appeasing Iran.

Wishful thinking is an understandable human failing. But wishful thinking of the magnitude exhibited by the “pragmatic era” crowd, the ambassador, Pelosi, and Obama is difficult to comprehend.

I believe it was the product of indifference (and at least in one case hostility) towards Israel. I can think of no better explanation for recklessly disregarding the reality faced by the Jewish state.

But what about my question? Will Hamas' boosters in the foreign policy establishment face a reckoning?

I doubt it. Questions might be asked. There might be a few more articles like the Post’s. But I expect neither a reckoning nor an end to criminally wishful thinking of liberals about the Middle East.